80's Tacky Day

Funny story with this one...

Emma came in the other day and said, "Mom, Friday is tacky day.  I don't have any tacky clothes so can I wear one of your shirts"?  OUCH... I got a good laugh and spent a few minutes trying to see me through her eyes.. I remember when my mom was in her 30s... She seemed so grown up to me..  Many days, I still feel like a kid trying to raise a kid.  I wonder if my mom felt as un-equipped to be raising children as I do some days...

Anyway, after stroking my bruised ego and a little further investigation, I learned that it was "80's tacky" day  and she had already done a little 80's research of her own.  And she was planning on taking the leggings and over-sized T-shirt route with a large belt.  Or at least that was her defense...

So, I started pulling up 80's pictures on the internet and Cindi Lauper videos.. And, we came up with an outfit that I think might have just won me some coolness points..

And if you too are feeling nostalgic, I've got a fun site for you to check out:  Like Totally 80s.  I laughed and laughed... I'm pretty sure we could have gone with any fad from the decade and totally covered the tacky part.  Banana clips, acid washed jeans, scrunchies, tied rolled pants, jelly bracelets, jelly shoes, reebok high tops, Michael jackson jacket...   I totally have the urge to put on some stirrup pants today!  I'm thinking 80's party for the grown ups.. Any takers?

**Edit** I've had some questions about where I found all the things that she's wearing so I thought I'd include that...

I didn't buy a thing specifically for this.  We did already have it all at the house.. I broke down and bought some stuff when we had 70's week but when this one came up, I decided that they were going to be having these things too often for me to buy an outfit every time it came up...

I get my resourcefulness from my mom who taught me how to pinch a penny until it screams..

*The black shirt and leggings are actually a unitard from dance. (We fully tested it to make sure it would come    down over her shoulders so she could got to the bathroom at school ;)

*The skirt came from me making an exception and going to Walmart  after Halloween because they had their costumes 90% off.. They didn't have anything good left.. But since I HATE Walmart, I didn't want the trip to be in vain so I grabbed a skirt for each of the girls and paid $1.30 for each.  She is wearing both to make it more poofy.

*The shoes are Dorothy shoes from their dress up box that I spray painted with some metallic paint that I had left over from a harp we made in children's church.

*The leg warmers are actually legs cut off of tights that are too small for Chloe.

* The bow in her hair is from the princess tulle skirts  that we made for her birthday..

* The things on her arms are from Chloe's Wonder Woman costume.

* Beads and sunglasses from the dress up box.

* The gloves came from a pack of two that I bought because I wanted pink gloves for Chloe and they only
   came in a pack of two.  I just cut the fingers off.

*  And I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but the shirt and belt are from her regular wardrobe.. She likes the
    sparkly..

* And believe it or not, I still had a crimping iron from when the girls we worked with in youth ministry had me
   crimp their hair.

And, one day, they'll have a 90's day and I'll be totally prepared because I saved all of my teen magazines!

Blessings,

Blog Hop-- The Secret to My Success With the Family Photos..

My father-in-law has been begging for a family picture of the WHOLE family since my niece was born in July of 2008.  That proved to be a difficult task since one of the family members (me) is also the photographer.. So, I spent the past few months mastering using my tri-pod and then filling the photography gap with photoshop skills so that my children won't grow up and wonder what I looked like when they were kids..

My mother-in-law posted our family picture on her facebook page and everyone was amazed that we didn't have a bad expression in the whole bunch..  While I did enjoy tricking people into thinking I'm that great of a photographer, it kind of made me feel like a fake.. Plus, I thought it would be an awesome edit to enter in the editing Blog Hop over at Pixel Perfect so I decided to reveal The secret to my success.. Besides, I think that in the era of digital photography, The editing is at least half of the talent anyway...


So I give you the before pictures.. Yes, pictures as in plural... My secret to getting a great family picture with children in it?  Take more than one..

So,  I instructed the adults to not worry about what the kids were doing and to just worry about themselves in the picture and to not make a move once the picture was taken.   I sat the camera up on the tripod and sat the time and was able to get a decent picture of the adults.

 Once I knew that my part of me being in it had been taken care of, I was able to move away from the camera and get a good picture of the three kids..  Then I managed to get a decent picture of the three girls once I was able to move behind the camera and dance and sing like a fool..

Then, using Photoshop Elements 8.0,  I cropped the three girls out of the second picture and pasted it into the other picture.  Using various editing techniques: erasing, smudging, airbrushing, cloning etc, I blended the edges.  It's really just a decide as you go, a little here, a little there kind of thing.  It wasn't that difficult.  Just tedious.. I was fortunate to get all three girls smiling or I would have cropped them all out of a different picture.

I cropped it in a little closer and straightened it from where the camera was leaning a bit on the tripod.  The rest is just your basic lighting, color, smoothing, defining edits..

Dana Ellis
Thoughts on Life After Dirty Diapers

Hiatus-- The Hunger Games

Some wonderful friends from church (I'm still not sure who was involved) gave us an I-pad for Christmas.  Which, resulted in me getting Adam's Kindle and Adam using the I-pad which was just fine with me since the Kindle means me having to learn less new technology..  And upon my acceptance of the Kindle, Adam convinced me to read "The Hunger Games", a trilogy in which I'm now totally absorbed.. I read the first book in less than 24 hours.  But after the first book, I decided I could neglect my children no longer (don't worry, they were in the excellent care of my mother while we were visiting during Christmas).  But, since we're back at home and I have to once again, be a responsible parent, I can only read during children-sleeping-hours which explains my blogging absence..   Which Adam always warns me will lose my blogger audience.

Due to my reduction in blogger comments, I have resolved that I have already lost my audience, aside from my photography friends downloading my existing free templates. THANK YOU PHOTOGRAPHY FRIENDS FOR KEEPING MY TRAFFIC UP.  It's a cheap tactic but it works.    But, just in case, you actually care what I have to say... I have a plan!  You too my friend, should join me in reading "The Hunger Games".  I promise, you'll be absorbed, and it will keep you occupied until I am once again inspired to blog and we can  meet again and share a new camaraderie having experienced the games together..  And Adam can get some amazon credit because you used his Amazon associate link below to order the books..

Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset

New Years Photo Card Photoshop Template

Just in case you missed the Christmas cards...

Download this template by clicking below:

Photoshop New Years Photo Card

Check back next Friday for a Valentine's freebie.. 

Blessings,

Christmas Eve with Mr. Belton and Mrs. Ruby

Friday's Freebie-- PS Nine Square Storyboard template

Click to download: Nine Square Storyboard

Merry Christmas!

Day 2

Christmas of Presence Day 1 Dec. 23rd

Here's the plan for our first day of our Christmas of Presence.  You can definitely see my years of youth ministry coming through on this.. But, there's nothing that Emma likes more than a written plan.. Plus, having it in the plan helps insure that the cleanup happens.  It is either I or Emma who is the first to rise at our house so if I happen to out-sleep Emma in the morning, I will have it posted in a place that I can send her to see that the only fun that will be happening before 9:00 a.m. will be sleeping.. Everyone slept here until 8:30 a.m. this morning.. It was glorious!

If you're totally confused about what this is, check out my previous post where I wrote about our Christmas tradition and Advent Conspiracy.

I'll report back later about how horribly we got of schedule.. But until then, I'll be a little pre-ocuppied until after the story of Mary and the Angel (but no worries, I have a freebie for Friday scheduled ahead of time ;))

May you have a wonderful Christmas as you hold your love ones close..

A Celebration fit for a King-- An "Advent Conspiracy" Christmas

I'll be working hard today to get all loose strings tied and put away so that we can experience the wonderful tradition that we started a couple of years ago, when we first heard about the "Advent Conspiracy".

We started noticing that as the Christmas season approached, it was accompanied by a feeling of dread and followed by a feeling of relief with it's passing.  We realized that our loss of love for the season was due to the hectic pace, stress and over-commercialization that has come to characterized the season.  This combined with the encouragement we felt from the "Advent Conspiracy"movement, led us to re-imagine the way we do Christmas. We have cut the number of gifts down for the kids to one present from each of us and one present to each other. I carve three days out of Christmas vacation where we do nothing but play. I cook food, I get all of the housework done and I get everything organized ahead of time. Then we have gifts that we open every so often over the course of  three days...but, these gifts are things like cookie cutters with instructions that say: "make cookies for the couple down the street" ... a tub of icing that says: "Bake Jesus a birthday cake"  ... or a book that says: "read this book together". We call it "A Christmas of Presence". We watch movies and tell stories and play hide-&-seek in the dark. We talk about what Christmas means.  On Christmas morning, we do a scavenger hunt that leads the girls to their one "big gift" and then celebrate with birthday cake for breakfast (Don't judge.  It's once a year! ;) ).

So far, the girls have been completely on-board.  They ask a lot more questions about what games we're going to play than what gifts they're going to get.  It's the one time of year that I feel like I get it right. I guess it's like a three day Sabbath.. I've tried hard to incorporate the Sabbath into our lives on a weekly basis. I think there is a great need for us to learn to "be still and know that He is God". But, I have to admit that I haven't had much success with that particular endeavor.

You can read about the events that led up to the start of this new tradition in 2008 and about our second "Christmas of Presence" in 2009. To summarize: We do minimal gift giving, and we use the money that we would have used for all those other gifts (that we didn't actually need) to help someone else. In 2008, we sent money to an organization that builds wells in areas without accessible clean water. In 2009 and 2010, we spread it around to several different needs that we had heard about.  I had gotten to the point that I dreaded Christmas because of what it had become: a celebration of consumerism. Would you believe that I haven't stepped a foot into a Wal-mart or the mall this entire holiday season? Can I tell you how freeing that is? It's renewed our love for the season and Christmas has reclaimed it's place as the best thing we do all year!

This year, we have added a few exciting elements to our celebration.  We have an older couple at church, who our girls lovingly refer to as "Mr. Belton" and "Mrs. Ruby".  Mr. Belton and Mrs. Ruby just decided on a whim to visit to our church one Sunday morning. We have no, (and I mean literally NO) elderly people at our church besides them (though if you ever experience Mrs. Ruby's spunk, you'll have a hard time thinking of her as an 82-year-old).  It shouldn't have surprised me that they chose to stay and call our church home.  You can feel the love radiating from the building upon approach.. But, since we have no programs for seniors, or anything geared specifically towards that age group, I didn't figure we had much to offer them.  I'm still not sure that we do, but they have offered us so much.  It just so happens that they don't have any grandchildren living nearby to love on, and my children don't have any grandparents living nearby to love on them (though they get PLENTY of it long-distance and when we visit Alabama). Mr. Belton and Mrs. Ruby came and shared Thanksgiving with us . They will be sharing Christmas with us as well.  They have added a whole new element of love to our lives, and it certainly doesn't hurt that Mrs. Ruby is the best dessert maker in the world. We have been so blessed by them.

Our church also serves a meal down at the Rescue Mission on the fourth Saturday of the month.  It just happened to turn out that the fourth Saturday fell on Christmas day this year. It  seemed obvious that we should celebrate Jesus' birth best in a place where He would most likely be, and my conscience just wouldn't allow me to cancel a thing like that in the name of celebrating the Savior of the world (who so often spoke of loving "the least of these").  With all the holiday traveling and gatherings, I was a little concerned that I might end up providing a meal to 50 hungry men by myself. As it turns out, I will have no such fate. We're going to have quite a crowd serving down at the mission and afterwards, we'll be meeting back for dessert back at our house. They've left very little of the cooking up to me, which will most definitely will work to the advantage of the men we will be feeding.  Our church didn't have to be convinced that we should spend Christmas night this way.  It was obvious to them as well.  I can't think of a better way to celebrate Christmas, and, I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to be a part of this family that loves Jesus and His world so much.

Sunday after church, we will be heading over to Alabama to spend Christmas with our families,  and once again I have the same kind of anticipation I had when I was a child, and a I have a hope for a Christmas magic greater than any we've ever experienced before. It is my prayer that we will make memories for our children...of a celebration that is fit for a King.

May you experience true Christmas magic, a real Peace on Earth.  May you be blessed so that you may be a blessing to others. 

Blessings,

Tennesee-- November 20th 2010

Today was the first day of Christmas vacation.. Last night, I cheered when I turned the alarm clock off of it's normal 6:00 a.m. dreaded beep.. And, after weeks and weeks of groaning at those numbers and desiring just a few more minutes of sweet slumber, I woke at exactly: 6:00 a.m... "It's like rai-ee-ain on your wedding day".. Don't you think?

Anyway, I did manage about 45 minutes to myself before anyone else woke.  So, I decided to try to catch up on blogging a bit..  

Speaking of weddings.. The week before Thanksgiving, we made a trip to Lawrenceville, TN for Adam's cousin's wedding.. I had a fun time shadowing their wedding photographer.. And, I learned why wedding photography can become so pricey.  As I still haven't edited all of the hundreds of pictures that I took.. When I get those done, I'll do a separate post.  But for now.  Here's one of the beautiful bride..

Lawrenceville is an interesting little town in that it has pretty substantial Amish community.. You'll have to forgive the quality of the following picture.  I snapped it pulling out of a parking lot and the cropped it a lot but it's just too funny to me to leave it out.

We stayed in these new "green cabins" at the David Crocket State Park.. And I have to say, they were quite nice..

The place was covered in deer.. We stopped one evening to get this picture.  At one point there were nine deer on this hill.  I was really wishing I had a zoom lens for this one..

Not only did the windows that surrounded the living room of the cabin make for great views, it also provided for a great opportunity for baby pictures...

Meet Baby Braxton-- Isn't he adorable.. I'm so in love

Look for a free  download of this storyboard template next Friday. 

And last, I leave you with sweet memories for my children, visits with
 the grandparents and great grandma.

We had a wonderful time.  But as always, there wasn't enough time to fit everything in before we had to head back for the next thing on the schedule.  

Blessings,